PdfPecker
Docs 1.24.0: Fluent C# API
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This is the manual for PdfPecker 1.24.0. Read it for the latest version, 1.25.0.

Fluent C# API

Changed in 1.24.0: What it covers.

PdfPecker.Fluent builds PDFs from C# code instead of HTML, in the style of QuestPDF. You describe pages, headers, footers, columns, rows, tables, text, images and barcodes in code; PdfPecker.Fluent writes compact HTML and CSS for them and renders it with PdfPecker. It needs no browser, no native binaries and no package other than PdfPecker.

dotnet add package PdfPecker.Fluent

It is released together with PdfPecker, always with the same version, and depends on the PdfPecker release of that version. It runs on .NET 8, 9 and 10, and is trimmable and Native AOT compatible.

using PdfPecker.Fluent;

Document.Create(container =>
{
    container.Page(page =>
    {
        page.Size(PageSizes.A4);
        page.Margin(2, Unit.Centimetre);
        page.DefaultTextStyle(x => x.FontSize(11));

        page.Header().Text("Hello PdfPecker").FontSize(20).Bold().FontColor(Colors.Blue.Darken2);

        page.Content().PaddingVertical(1, Unit.Centimetre).Column(column =>
        {
            column.Spacing(10);
            column.Item().Text("A paragraph of text.");
            column.Item().Image(File.ReadAllBytes("logo.png")).FitWidth();
        });

        page.Footer().AlignCenter().Text(x =>
        {
            x.Span("Page ");
            x.CurrentPageNumber();
            x.Span(" of ");
            x.TotalPages();
        });
    });
})
.GeneratePdf("hello.pdf");

What it covers Changed in 1.24.0

  • Layout: Column, Row, Table (row and column spans, header and footer rows repeated on every page, cell backgrounds and borders that fill the row in any call order, as in QuestPDF), padding, borders, corner radius, background, sizes, alignment, page breaks, Layers, Inlined, MultiColumn, EnsureSpace, Decoration, lists, transforms and ScaleToFit, which draws content smaller until it fits a box of fixed size, for badges and labels. Repeat draws content again on each later page its parent continues on, StopPaging keeps content to its first page, and ExtendLastCellsToTableBottom runs short columns to the end of a table. The page's Header(), Content() and Footer() align vertically as in QuestPDF, so Content().AlignMiddle() centres a cover title on the page, and border calls in a row merge into one border.
  • Text: spans with font, size, weight, colour, decoration, spacing, superscript and subscript, OpenType features, justified text, ClampLines, headings that become bookmarks, links, and page numbers and the page count anywhere: in the header, the footer and the content. Section page numbers: BeginPageNumberOfSection, EndPageNumberOfSection, TotalPagesWithinSection and PageNumberWithinSection, in Roman numerals, letters or zero-padded with Format(PageNumberFormat). Overline, BreakAnywhere, Hyphenate, per-span direction, Leader (dots or a line up to a price or page number) and Markdown content, written with PdfPecker's own Markdown parser and safe for text from users. TableOfContents() lists the headings with dot leaders and page numbers.
  • Pages: size, margins, colour, and a header and footer on every page with page numbers. ShowOnce and SkipOnce in the header or footer give the first page a band of its own, such as a letterhead followed by a slim header. Several Page calls give page sets with their own size, margins, header and footer in one document, and page numbers, links, PDF/A, PDF/UA and signatures work across all of them. EvenPageHeader and EvenPageFooter for documents printed on both sides, Background and Foreground for letterheads, frames and watermarks over the whole page, and ContinuousSize for receipts as tall as their content. Document.Merge makes one PDF of several documents, each with its own page numbers or numbered through.
  • Form fields and footnotes, which QuestPDF does not have: TextField (one line, multiline or password), CheckBox, RadioButton, ComboBox and ListBox become fillable PDF fields, SignatureField an empty field that PdfSigner signs later, and text.Footnote("...") numbers a note and sets it at the bottom of its page.
  • Images and graphics: PNG, JPEG, WebP, BMP, TIFF, GIF and SVG images, shared Image and SvgImage objects with WithCompressionQuality and WithRasterDpi, linear and radial gradients, Opacity, lines, column, bar, line and pie charts with Chart, and QR, EPC payment QR, Swiss QR, Code 128, EAN-13, Data Matrix and GS1 Data Matrix barcodes. SwissQrBill lays out the whole Swiss QR-bill payment part with its receipt.
  • Accessibility: every one of QuestPDF's Semantic* calls, formulas, indexes, tables of contents and list labels included, writes the HTML PdfPecker tags a PDF/UA document from. Language("da") sets the language of a part.
  • Existing PDFs: DocumentOperation, with QuestPDF's names, merges, overlays and underlays pages, adds attachments, encrypts, decrypts and linearizes.
  • Everything else in PdfPecker through PdfOptions: PDF/A, PDF/UA, signatures, passwords, watermarks, e-invoices, attachments and fonts.
  • Output: GeneratePdf (bytes, file or stream), GeneratePdfAsync, GenerateImages and GenerateHtml, which shows the HTML PdfPecker renders.

Text, links, colours and names you pass are encoded, so caller data never turns into markup. Html() and Css() are the exception: they insert trusted HTML and CSS as they are, for anything the fluent calls don't cover yet, so never pass user input to them.

Coming from QuestPDF

Most QuestPDF code ports by changing the using lines: Document.Create, Page, Header, Content, Footer, Column, Row, Table, Text, Padding, Border, Background, Align*, Width, Height and GeneratePdf have the same names. ScaleToFit, ShowOnce, SkipOnce, page numbers in the content and every section page number work too, and so do Repeat, StopPaging, ContinuousSize, ExtendLastCellsToTableBottom, Document.Merge, DocumentOperation, Image.FromFile and the image compression settings, page Background and Foreground, and every Semantic* call. QuestPDF formats page numbers with a function, which PdfPecker cannot run during layout, so Format(PageNumberFormat) gives Roman numerals, letters and zero padding instead. Not available: Dynamic, Canvas and the Companion previewer. QuestPDF compresses images at High quality and 288 dpi by default and PdfPecker.Fluent leaves them as they are unless asked. The package's README lists every difference.

Coming from MigraDoc

MigraDoc builds a document as an object model (Document, Section, Paragraph, Table) and renders it through PDFsharp. With 6.5.0 (October 2026), PDFsharp and MigraDoc moved to AGPL-3.0 or a paid licence; 6.2.4 and earlier were MIT. PdfPecker.Fluent is MIT and describes the same documents in code. The usual MigraDoc calls map like this:

  • document.AddSection(), section.PageSetup become container.Page(page => ...), page.Size, page.Margin
  • section.Headers.Primary, section.Footers.Primary become page.Header(), page.Footer()
  • Headers.FirstPage with DifferentFirstPageHeaderFooter becomes ShowOnce() and SkipOnce() in the header or footer
  • AddParagraph, AddFormattedText become Text("..."), or Text(t => t.Span("...").Bold())
  • AddTable, AddColumn, AddRow become Table with ColumnsDefinition and Cell()
  • MergeRight, MergeDown become ColumnSpan, RowSpan
  • row.HeadingFormat = true becomes table.Header(...), repeated on every page
  • KeepTogether, KeepWith become PreventPageBreak(), EnsureSpace()
  • AddPageBreak becomes PageBreak()
  • AddPageField, AddNumPagesField become CurrentPageNumber(), TotalPages()
  • AddSectionPagesField, AddPageRefField become TotalPagesWithinSection, BeginPageNumberOfSection
  • AddBookmark, AddHyperlink become Section("name"), SectionLink, Hyperlink
  • AddFootnote becomes text.Footnote("...")
  • AddImage, AddTextFrame become Image, Layers or Unconstrained
  • AddChart becomes Chart, and tab stops with leaders become Leader
  • Headers.EvenPage becomes EvenPageHeader()
  • ListInfo becomes List
  • Styles such as Normal and Heading1 become DefaultTextStyle and TextStyle objects you reuse

Not available: RTF output and charts beyond column, bar, line and pie. What PdfPecker.Fluent adds over MigraDoc: complex scripts and right-to-left text, hyphenation, PDF/A and PDF/UA built from the layout, signatures, form fields, QR codes and output as images or HTML.

The fluent layer adds well under a millisecond to a typical document. On the same invoice, built call for call, it is about four times as fast as QuestPDF 2026.9.1, as measured in the PdfPecker.Benchmarks repository.